Operation FAMILY (Family Always Matter, I Love You)
by zman123
Summary: Decomissioning is a frightful process.One whose very mention can undo even the most noble and valiant Kids Next Door Hero from grace. Its a day where aged Operatives are discarded like stale biscuits and deprived of their memories to become empty shells and anyone who doesn't submit is considered a traitor. "Traitors" such as Cree Lincoln,eldest daughter of the Lincoln family.
1. Good and Evil

The Kids Next Door. A mysterious yet seemingly omnipresent organisation run only by kids under the age of thirteen,

that needs no introduction.

A group dedicated to uniting all the mistreated and unwanted children of this cruel, cruel world against the

unfair and unduly harsh authoritarian group of tyrants known as "adults".

Where every member is given special training to become wise beyond their years by mastering skills no adult would

have taught them so young, and to stand united against a common threat that only seems to get worse even as the

world seems to get better, under the banner of a great and honourable leader known as the "supreme leader".

These are their stories.

Operation F.A.M.I.L.Y

Family

Always

Matter,

I

Love

You

...Good and evil...

A concept that needed no introduction to anyone in the modern and civillized world, was the concept of good and

evil.

A thought process devised by one of the greatest thinkers to ever walk the earth (whose

name history had sadly not been kind enough to record), that stated clearly that there

were only two types of people in this world, and that these two types were clearly distinguishable by

very obvious differences only an idiot would be unable to recognize.

Good people did good things like giving their money to charity or saving other people's lives and in general these people

would walk with their head held high surrounded by an adoring crowd whose hearts they had captivated through

the kindness expressed by their selfless actions.

If a fine event such as a royal feast were to be held soon, such people would always be welcomed as the guest of

honour and would be given the finest treatment available.

The king himself (or the supreme leader herself) might even promise his throne to them as reward for their heroism.

Then there were bad people.

Bad people were in many respects the complete opposite of good people. They did bad things like always trying to

take what was not rightfully theirs without even saying "Please" or "thank you", and they went around causing

general havoc and pain on others simply because they liked seeing the tears of those they hurt.

Bad people were never invited to any of the grand parties and feasts that Good people were the guests of honour of.

The king (or supreme leader)would do his best to pretend they didn't even exist, and if they tried to convince him (or her)otherwise,

it was the dungeons for that idiot who dared to speak against their leader after all the horrible things they had

done to offend the honour of a peaceful kingdom.

The differences even extended to the fashion choices.

Good people walked with their head held high dressed in bright and beautiful suits and dresses that clearly took

the tailor his time and effort.

Bad people crept menacingly along with their heads low and their shoulders slouched with an otherwise poor posture

sure to give them a crooked back at a young age. Their clothes would be decrepit and poorly made and like the people who wore them, have a dark and menacing air

that warned anyone that took a glance in their direction that now was the time to beat a hasty retreat and not

spare them so much more as another look.

Or to put it bluntly, good people deserved rewards for their good behaviour while bad people deserved nothing but

to be punished. Good people deserved all the friends they could get while for a bad person to have so much

as a single friend meant that hell was freezing over and that lady karma was once again getting in over her head.

It was a thing that simply did not happen in a fair world.

Obviously good and bad people were judged by their actions. If you jumped into a very deep river to save a drowning man at great risk at yourself because  
you cared, that was obviously the mark of a good person. But if you pulled out a gun and started trying to shoot at the same strange man, then you would be doing a bad thing while becoming a bad person who could no longer be trusted or respected any longer.

But suppose hypothetically that the strange man was also pointing a gun at you and that it was clear that soft words would not melt his stony heart or  
perhaps aiming his gun at people who were the friends you had promised to protect and be there for.

What then?

It was this whirlwind of an alphabet soup of bizzare thoughts which twisted and turned in the mind of

the eldest daughter of the Lincoln family as she sat with a sullen and impassive expression at the dinner table

with her mum, dad and younger sister at one of the rare occasions the family all had time to reunite as one.

Opportunities like this one came maybe once in a blue moon since every member of the family was an overzealous

workaholic in their own jobs as diverse as they were, and for Cree Lincoln, that was far too often.

The tall, dark and attractive teenager ate quickly and quietly, eager to get away from the table as quickly as possible.

Away from her family that she always found painful to be around but most of all away from her little sister and

that highly poisoned look which made the younger sibling look nothing less than a deadly snake in the grass waiting for the

first opportunity to ambush and utterly mangle its hapless prey.

The prey in this case being Cree who knew all too well how the moment the both of them took one step from the

sight of their loving parents how "truce" would be off.

Cree needed not lift her gaze to meet that of her once so adorable and fun-loving younger sister to know that

she too was reminiscing over the many terrible scraps they had gotten into over the years, each of which had been

both physically and emotionally jarring for both of them.

Each punch that her younger sister Abigail had been forced to throw had hurt Abigail as much as it hurt Cree.

Not that the bruise on Cree's left temple wasn't incredibly hard to bear in its own right with how it seemed to

unleash a horrible burst of pain every time Cree made even a small movement of her face to bite and chew at what was supposed

to be a delicious meal of roasted turkey with potato mash and beautifully blended gravy.

Yet try as she might to shrug it away, the pain made it all but apparent that this was not a wound that would

heal quickly.

The rest of the meal passed without event aside from Mr and Mrs Lincoln exchanging some small talk with their

younger daughter Abigail about some fairly inconsequential subjects such as the weather and the high rates

of unemployment that only seemed to be going up as the incompetent US government sat by and did nothing

along with a few encouraging words that as busy as mummy and daddy were with work at the moment, nothing could

change the love they had for both their younger and older daughter.

How the two guilty parents wished more time could be spent like this, the family together in one room talking

like a family should.

It wasn't long before the meal ended and every family member politely exchanged farewells and goodnights as

each headed to their separate room to engage in a little private time before going to bed for the night.

Cree was the last to leave. She sat silently waiting until the last sounds of her family's footsteps had died

away before with a deep sigh she finally deigned to rise and begin trudging upstairs barely lifting her

feet from the ground with each step.

Years of being dragged into one ferocious combat after another meant that her eyes darted about even as

she walked about knowing that this was probably the one place on earth where she needed not fear being ambushed as

it was only here that she remained despite all her poor life choices, a welcome guest.

She locked the door behind her as she went into her bedroom, her own little private paradise in this sad world where

one day the wind blew one way while the next day another so that nothing was ever sure.

And as had recently become her evening routine for when she was not otherwisely occupied with another violent

fight or a family meeting that was supposed to be comforting but never was, she walked to the mirror she kept

on the worn brown oak desk to have once again a good look at herself.

She wondered if this was becoming an addiction with how often she found herself doing this now.

Or whether she was simply getting stupider since Einstein's definition of stupidity was doing the same thing again

and again only to expect different results.


	2. Black and White

...Black and white...

Heh stupid, a word she used so often now to describe so many things that she wondered if she had actually forgotten

its meaning.

Stupid Abigail, stupid Numbuh 5, stupid Kids Next Door chumps and stupid other teenagers who she was constantly forced

to be in contact with even if they never properly understood her and often treated her like a tool that could be

thrown away the instant she wasn't useful to them anymore.

Not unlike the Kids Next Door after all she had done for them. At least her fellow teenagers

and her shared a common dislike for those ungrateful snobs who wouldn't know the meaning of gratitude if it smacked

them silly on the back of their thick skulls. Not after what they'd almost done to her in spite of all that

she had sacrificed for them.

The young woman that looked back at her from behind the slightly tarnished glass was far from ugly.

Slightly messy but still very pretty short black hair almost perfectly complimented her fairly dark skin which

along with her other mannerisms marked her as a member of the Creole.

From what Cree learned in history class, the Creole were a group of slightly European African-Americans who used to commonly be given the title "Free persons of colour"

while being forced to stick to select cities such as New Orleans which were not too stringent about superficial

things such as race.

They occupied a middle ground of sorts in the dark times of racism and the slave trade.

They certainly didn't have anywhere near as many rights as the whites, who themselves saw the Creole as only slightly

better than your typical straight from Africa slave in the marketplaces and it was still fairly easy for them

to lose their property and freedom to a particularly conniving and crafty white man if he simply found the

right words to use against them.

But so long as they stuck to the right places and held their ground well, they were essentially free if only by the

fact that they didn't have to work on a plantation all day while being whipped and shouted at without being

paid anything. If they overlooked the fact that sometimes they'd be passed over for a promotion, paid slightly

less or have to give up their seat on a crowded bus then all in all the Creole had it pretty good during

a bad time as they represented perhaps some of the first steps towards racial equality.

It made an epic kind of story to be read in the usually boring confines of the school classrooms.

An amazing kind of movie to end an otherwisely dreary and hard to sit through school term with.

Oppressed victims of an oppresive regime toppling the cruel leaders who had no claim over them

and being celebrated as heroes when they regained their freedoms.

"Twelve years a slave", a heartwarming tale of an innocent man's struggle against injustice after

evil adults tried to snatch him away from his family, his friends and the life he had built for himself out of

hard work.

"Thirteen years a Kids Next Door Operative" (There were in fact infants in the Kids Next door contrary to popular

belief, most of them there for the reason of joining as early as possible so that they could have as many years in the Kids next door

as possible), a tragic tale with no happy ending of any kind to speak about as a group of uncaring

Senior officers threatened the soon-to-be teenage girl with the prospect that none of the blood, sweat or tears

that she had poured into her career had earned her anything but scorn.

Scorn that the heroic agent had done nothing deliberate to deserve other than age, and ageing was not something

you could prevent except in the lovey dovey fairyales.

And as much as any Kids Next Door agent would hate to admit it, life was not a fairytale even in the Kids

Next Door.

These sad thoughts vibrated in Cree's mind uneasily even as she took toothpaste to toothbrush and toothbrush

to her teeth.

The gentle and meticulous motions of carefully cleaning out bacterion from teeth lasted three gradual

minutes which seemed to crawl by like years as a tired and worn out face which showed no pride despite its

best efforts in the mirror peered back at her.

A rinse of the mouth. A quick shower which caused steam to cloud the room like a thick fog.

A few slow footsteps from bathroom back to bedroom and a locking of the door after a final peer around

the landing around her, stifling a heavy yawn while she did so.


	3. Your Name

...Your name...

Cree had heard the stories of what happened to those who were decomissioned long before her thirteenth birthday.

It was something even the higher ups of Kids Next Door couldn't stop talking about.

In the worst but not most uncommon cases the poor souls who had their memories removed would jump from the

tallest buildings having lost the will to go any further after the only positive thoughts which kept

them going through an otherwise depressive childhood of either insufferable dullness, unfairness or both.

Some of them preferred the rope in the attic method, while others took the fully loaded revolver to the head

approach but the reasons each one had for such a shocking act were identical.

There were stories of brothers and sisters whose relationship were never the same again after their once

beloved and happy siblings poined at them mumbling gibberish unable to even remember their sibling's names ,

crying uncontrollably while doing so.

And cases of friends who could never be friends again, as neither could even remember the other's name or

meeting them anywhere let alone that their friendship had rescued them both from so many life or

death situations while the pair fought valiantly side by side for a noble cause that had saved so many

lives that would forever be indebted to them.

Like the book "Your Name", where the exact same thing happened between a boy and a girl who would each

wake up every morning feeling a deep sense of something important missing that could never be restored

even though they had both gone on to lead productive and theoretically pleasant lives in gigantic mansions

as C.E.O's of world leading megacorps.

And who could forget the news reports of an increasingly high number of insane asylum patients who had been first

commited to the asylums under the mental health act just days after their thirteenth birthday.

Cree had seen some of them. She had known some of them personally. She had worked with some of them of

them behind enemy lines.

To see the ally who had fought tooth and nail once to break her out of the heavily guarded enemy prisons

she had once been taken capitve in now reduced to a vegetative mute in a straight jacket locked up

in a heavily guarded cell not much different from the one Cree herself was put into before being

so fortunately rescued, was a sight that caused Cree's hands to uncontrollably ball into fists and her

teeth to clench together so tightly she felt they might snap from the intense pressure.

Her head throbbed to bursting point and her blood rose to a degree wich would make the lava in the

fiercest volcano's seem like ice in comparison.

Many things were stupid but this was really stupid.

Especially when anyone with a handful of sense would see how it at all started with a stupid tradition

made by stupid rulemakers who deserved to be thrown into Arkham asylum in Gotham city quicker than the flash

could run while on a sugar rush after drinnking his weight in coffee.

The stupid Kids Next Door operative who wrote that stupid rule was the real threat to the Kids Next Door.

Not some petty Chief Executive Officer in some fancy suit who acted like he was such a big shot when

every one of his "clever" plans was as easy to squash as a fly. Even his nickname which he gave

himself to sound more intimidating only made him seem all the more hillarious.

Not that fashion criminal who was still wearing his halloween costume in the middle of august trying

to cover his absolutely comical appearance with a scary black suit that made him look even funnier.

And he called himself a grown adult and a "father" to his "delightful children".

That old man really didn't get the meaning of "just chill already".

"What a horrible thing not to even remember the name of your best friend" The dark skinned teenager

thought eerily to herself trembling slightly as she sat on her bed with only her desk lamp on

and tried to ready her mind for sleep.

This along with the long look in the mirror had become one of her other traditions that had become her

pre bedtime routine for reasons she couldn't completely put her finger on.

It was just one of those things that came and went.

It was time for a sleepy time joke. As one of Cree's teenage friends had often told her, laughter

was the best medicine in life.

But what kind of joke to tell to herself this time? What type of humour would serve as tonight's

final little giggle to end another day filled with mostly sadness?

A story, Cree decided after running her hand through her hair a few times as if trying

to clear the unease in a troubled mind that could never completely be cleared.

The ironic naming story of Robert Lane and his two sons.

It always made her and by extension her little sister Abby laugh even in her most bleak moments of boredom.

The story was a simple one. Its simplicity making way for all the more chuckles for the listeners.

Once, a fairly average man by the name of Robert Lane decided that when he had his sixth child, the lucky

boy would be called "Winner".

There was a strange feeling that the man could not quite discern which told him that this boy

in particular would be a special kind of successful. A daddy's little soldier to finally have

some sort of success in a family of failures.

And what better way to make this prophecy come true than with an appropriate name for this soon to be little hero.

Three years later, the man had another son and decided "well I already have a winner. How about a loser?".

He must have thought himself pretty clever for finishing off a joke that he started.

A finished bookend of sorts.

First a winner, then a loser. A "Loser Lane" at that.

The old saying always went that those who were unsuccessful in life ended up on a one way trip first

class down "loser lane".

Winner Lane could not possibly be expected to fail.

Loser Lane could not possibly be expected to succeed let alone upstage his earlier born big brother.

Yet years later when the eccentroc father who had named both little boys had long since passed on,

Loser Lane would be quickly rising through the ranks as an accomplished Police Sergant

in the New York Police Department as per his mother's long time dream after making it into and then

graduating several renowned schools as a top class student and basketball player.

Both brains and brawn one might say.

Winner Lane's trophy cabinet meanwhile would contain just one invisible trophy that only his

criminal record would make any mention about.

The trophy for a shockingly long list of crimes ranging from domestic violence to burglary to trespassing.

The prodigy had won big but not in the way one might have expected.

Robert Lane clearly had the right idea that naming really could determine the future of a person but

he must have gotten his two boys mixed up.

It was at this point in the story she was telling to herself that Cree allowed a ghost of a grin

to tug at her lips before it left as silently as it came.

A name really was a powerful thing.

Her name was Cree Lincoln.

Cree was the name of a little country that very few people had even heard about. This may have been

because throughout history it had been for the most part sensible enough to stay out of wars that

didn't need to be fought unlike some of the more well known countries.

A simple little country where people traded goods peacefully instead of fighting long and bloody wars

that were bad for everyone involved.

A place where people could be both right and humane.

A country that in Cree's opinion had the right to stand forever since it had triumphed against the worst

enemy of any country. And that was itself. A country itself was its worst enemy.

Just as the worst enemy of the Kids Next Door in Cree's opinion were celebrated and ubiquitously loved heroes who

stood proudly showing off their medal adorned robes at awarding ceremonies.

The great and honorable insert name here awarded lifetime service medal of honor after a lifetime of honor.

The Kids next door praised a villain who was only pretending to a hero to get attention and draw

away criticism.

Insert name here was really only a backstabbing traitor who didn't care a touch about any of his or her

fellow agents even as they awarded them that big shiny medal and praised their virtues in a loud voice.

Not unlike some of the dictators in the messed up regime based countries which contrary to popular belief

had not been eradicated.

No one had seen the so called "monsters" of modern day history like Hitler and Stalin for the "monsters"

they really were until much later and when they did, suffice to say that the damage had already been done.

If there was kind of war which to Cree was pointless and actually stupid on every level, then it was

a civil war.

When not sworn enemies but best friends fought each other.

And here Cree and Abby were in the middle of one such war right now. A war that seemed to have no end in sight.

And one where even her kind and usually very reasonable little sister had to be held as her mortal enemy.

Abby.

It was short for Abigail Lincoln, second child of the great and honorable Cree family.

It was also a name that was to Abraham as Samantha was to Sam and Alexis was to Alex.

And whereas you'd have to go out of your way to find a devoted enough historian who even had heard of the

region of the quiet and peaceful Cree, you'd have to be off your rocker to not know in great detail

the complete history of the amazing Abraham Lincoln.

To call the man a great and honorable leader would do him a deep dishonor.

It would be calling a chunk of diamond a lump of coal.

The embodiment of a good leader who knew what a highly unstable country needed to finally bring itself

from the ages of darkness, suffering and backward thinking that had tainted the country's greatest minds

for too long.

Abby was a good leader, Cree would have to give her that even if all that talent had to be wasted

in the petty bouts they had to engage in on a day to day basis and the only thing Abby wanted to lead Cree

towards was defeat and humiliation. Better than that bald boy Nigel any day off the week.

Not that Cree had any grudge against

The heir apparent to Numbuh 362 Rachel Mackenzie from what Cree had picked up.

Cree and Abigail "Abby".

Two very unique and special names.

A peaceful and modest little country of tradesmen and marketplaces alongside a great president who could

lead a horse to water and get it to drink if that was what he so wished.

And now two best companions who were even sisters, turned mortal enemies who struggled to participate in even

a civil conversation together.

Two heroes who would once have fought to the death for the sake of protecting one another.

Now two forever enemies who would remain locked in a petty little fued that wouldn't end even if

they both lived to one hundred and had to continue their fight with walking sticks instead of two by

four gadgets.


End file.
